Jerry Brown on Tax Reform

Only choice is raise taxes to deal with extreme difficulty

At this moment of extreme difficulty, it behooves us to turn to the people and get a clear mandate on how we should proceed: either to extend the taxes as I fervently believe or cut deeply into the programs from which--under federal law--we can still
extract the sums required.

From the time I first proposed what I believe to be a balanced approach to our budget deficit--both cuts and a temporary extension of current taxes--dozens of groups affected by one or another of the proposed cuts have said w
should cut somewhere else instead. Still others say we should not extend the current taxes but let them go away.
So far, however, these same people have failed to offer even one alternative solution.

Wherever I look, I see difficult choices. But I also see a bright future up ahead and a California economy that is on the mend.